Lynn Green

General Secretary

The General Secretary serves our Union by offering spiritual leadership within the context of the Word and prayer.

The General Secretary is the leader of our Union, both internally in supporting, guiding and encouraging our Associations, Colleges and Churches in mission, and also externally in representing the Union in the UK and abroad, in both Christian and secular settings. Read more...

Ken Benjamin

President

The President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain is elected annually and takes office in May.

The President’s main role is as a communicator / facilitator of our Union’s vision and mission. The President travels around our Union, engaging with local churches, regional Associations and Colleges. Read more...

Governance

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What is Christianity?

Our Union of over 2000 churches is supported by staff in thirteen regional associations and three specialist teams based in Didcot, Oxfordshire. Our six Baptist Colleges prepare men and women for ministry and offer ongoing development and training.

Home Mission Grants are given to support a variety of ministries in and through Baptist churches and chaplains across the country. It also enables all our churches and ministers to be supported and helped through the work of the Regional Associations and the specialist teams in Didcot.

Other areas of work

Safeguarding for the protection of adults and children from harm, abuse or neglect. Every church should adopt safeguarding policy statements for children, young people, and adults at risk. We help churches maintain safe environments for all, with processes to follow should something go wrong, and support for everyone involved.

Resources Library

Our Resources Library has a wealth of guideline leaflets and information to help you and your church on a range of topics. You can also find a range of booklets, cards and our Baptists Together magazine available to buy from the Online Shop.

Welfare: 'stick to the facts'

Britain’s Free Churches have attacked the Government – including the Prime Minister – this week over their ‘misleading’ and ‘wrong’ use of statistics to explain welfare policy.

The Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) of our Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Methodist and the United Reformed Church has long been campaigning against Government and media misuse of statistics to denigrate the poor. On Monday it issued a statement in the wake of the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) response to comments made by Archbishop Vincent Nichols’ criticism to welfare reform.

The DWP responded by stating that welfare reforms will ‘transform’ the lives of some of the poorest families in our communities with universal credit, ‘making three million households better off and lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.’

However, this was misleading, said JPIT, for it only shows a carefully selected 'airbrushed' picture of UK welfare reform.

‘It neglects to mention that its own figures also state that over the long term 2.8 million families will be worse off under the new system.

‘Analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies shows conclusively that, taken together, the raft of tax and benefit changes that make up welfare reform will increase the levels of both child and working age poverty.’

In the article Mr Cameron rejected Mr Nichols’ claim that government welfare reform is leaving people in destitution.
He said the system needed reform, and was about giving people ‘new purpose, new opportunity, new hope’.

Mr Cameron claimed that the number of workless households doubled over the last decade.

However, JPIT and the Church of Scotland, which together published the Truth and Lies report last year to dispel six myths about poverty, pointed out that data from the Office for National Statistics shows the number of workless households increased from 3.7 million in 1997 to 3.9 million in 2010, not 7.4 million as his claim would suggest.

The statement also stated that claims regarding the long-term unemployed and housing benefit were wrong.
‘Mr Cameron repeats tired and discredited numbers which paint an inaccurate picture of ‘welfare dependent’ families spending years on benefits and receiving huge amounts of money,’ said Paul Morrison, Public Issues Policy Adviser and author of the Truth and Lies report.

‘If Mr Cameron can’t even understand his own figures, how will he ever grasp the reality of UK poverty?

‘We have spent this past year campaigning and writing to Mr Cameron and his ministers about how his Government’s misuse of statistics denigrates the poor – and we have yet to receive either explanation or correction.

‘It is disappointing that the response to the Archbishop has been characterised by misleading numbers from the DWP Press Office on Monday and straightforwardly untrue numbers from the Prime Minister on Wednesday.

‘Last year half a million people relied on foodbanks, this year we expect that number to be much higher. The key question – why Churches and charities are seeing more people in abject destitution - remains unanswered.

‘Mr Cameron says he wants to stick to the facts, and that is the fact he urgently needs to address.’